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THE BALLADS

Beach Fossils

The Other Side Of Life: Piano Ballads

    Inspired by a love of artists such as Bill Evans, Lester Young, Chet Baker and Vince Guaraldi, Dustin Payseur reimagines some of his greatest hits from the Beach Fossils catalog alongside a group of formally trained jazz musicians. A rich and mellow mix of piano, saxophone, upright bass and brushed drums explore the contours of familiar songs, soaring Payseur’s melancholic harmonies to new heights.

    Recommended if you like: Chet Baker, Norah Jones, Kamasi Washington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Wild Nothing, DIIV, Kevin Krauter.

    "improvisational jazz, classical music, and Stereolab... his songwriting owes more to loop-based composition than garage-bound woodshedding." – Pitchfork.

    TRACK LISTING

    01. This Year
    02. May 1st
    03. Sleep Apnea
    04. What A Pleasure
    05. Adversity
    06. Down The Line
    07. Youth
    08. That's All For Now

    The Ballads

    I Can't See Your Love (For The Tears In My Eyes) Pt. 1 / Pt. 2

      A classic Vee-Jay side from 1965 that originally sneaked out on the Bay Area Wee label. The original goes for around £100, the second Wee press for £75, while the Vee-Jay version is 50 quid a throw. That said, copies are few and far between these days.

      Featuring an upbeat, brass-powered Temptationslike harmony with a call and response, a deep sax wail and a piano motif pushing it forward towards a glorious middle eight that breaks into a Gospel roll out.

      Powered by Ric-Tic-like drum rolls; a euphoric soulful classic split into two essential parts.

      The Ballads were a four-piece from Oakland, across the bridge from San Francisco, featuring Freddie Hughes, who would later sign to Wand. The band themselves almost made it, charting in 1968 with the Willie Hutch-produced ‘God Bless Our Love’ but this earlier recording is the business.

      Both sides remastered from the original sound source.

      TRACK LISTING

      I Can’t See Your Love (For The Tears In My Eyes) Pt.1
      I Can’t See Your Love (For The Tears In My Eyes) Pt.2

      Giant Sand

      Recounting The Ballads Of Thin Line Men

        It’s 33 and a third years since the seminal Giant Sand and its country cousin The Band Of… Blacky Ranchette entered the studio to lay down their second albums. Yes. Both bands had recorded their second albums each. Two sides of the multi-faceted hyper-productive Howe Gelb. “I was turning 28,” he recalls, “and had been wanting to make and release albums since my early 20s, but only recently had figured out how. It was time to make up for lost time.”

        Time was of the essence. That thin line between then and now has seen journeymen Giant Sand release 27-ish albums, their latest, ‘Recounting The Ballad Of The Thin Line Men’ turning the clock back to 1986’s ‘Ballad Of A Thin Line Man’, picking over the bones and making a whole new soup. All these years on, the latest incarnation of Giant Sand: Howe Gelb (guitars, piano) Tommy Larkins (drums) and Thøger Lund (bass), have dusted off the old vinyl and re-imagined those heady days – they’ve polished these buried gems, reignited some truculent tirades and rekindled an ageless angst. The revamp re-orders the tracks, drops a couple and adds ‘Reptillian’, a previously lost song hailing from their album’s 25th anniversary re-issue, a tune that opens proceedings and basks in all its crinkly glory. There’s also two takes of ‘Tantamount’. The unique thing about Giant Sand’ is they make it all their own, they sound like no-one else. The songs remain the same, but somehow completely different. Howe: “We were a fine storm. The greatest storm in terms of tumultuous velocity and pelting bluster. It proved unstoppable... for a minute”.

        TRACK LISTING

        1 Reptillian
        2 Hard Man To Get To Know
        3 Desperate Man
        4 You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory
        5 Tantamount
        6 Who Am I
        7 Body Of Water
        8 Graveyard
        9 The Chill Outside
        10 Thin Line Man
        11 Tantamount Blast (Bonus Track)

        Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

        Murder Ballads (2011 Digital Remaster)

          ‘Murder Ballads’ is the ninth studio album by Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, released in 1996. As the title suggests, the album consists of new and traditional murder ballads, a genre of songs that relays the details of crimes of passion.

          ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ was a hit single and received two ARIA Awards and guest musicians on the album include Kylie Minogue, PJ Harvey and Shane MacGowan.

          It was the band’s biggest commercial success to date, most likely helped by the unexpected repeated airplay of the ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ video on MTV, who even nominated Cave for their Best Male Artist award of that year, though this nomination was later withdrawn at Cave’s request.

          ‘Murder Ballads’ received almost unanimous critical praise with Rolling Stone awarding it 4 Stars and Entertainment Weekly rating the album very highly as well. Q magazine had this to say: “...Musically, The Bad Seeds touch on tinkling cabaret jazz, country-paced morbidity and every morose station between” while it ranked Number 7 in the NME's 1996 Critics’ Poll.




          TRACK LISTING

          LP / CD
          Song Of Joy
          Stagger Lee
          Henry Lee
          Lovely Creature
          Where The Wild Roses Grow
          The Curse Of Millhaven
          The Kindness Of Strangers
          Crow Jane
          O’Malley’s Bar
          Death Is Not The End

          DVD (with CD/DVD Version Only)
          Audio
          Murder Ballads (5.1 & Stereo)
          The Ballad Of Robert Moore
          And Betty Coltrane
          The Willow Garden
          King Kong Kitchee Kitchee
          Ki-Mi-O
          Knoxville Girl
          Video
          Do You Love Me Like I Love You (Part 9: Murder Ballads)
          Stagger Lee
          Where The Wild Roses Grow
          Henry Lee


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